ComponentScanner fails with classes in WEB-INF/classes on websphere ------------------------------------------------------------------- Key: JBSEAM-4022 URL: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBSEAM-4022 Project: Seam 2 Issue Type: Bug Components: Core Affects Versions: 2.1.1.GA Environment: Websphere 7.0 (also reported on Websphere 6.1) Reporter: John Eckhart Attachments: classdescriptor.patch This bug is a follow-on to 2347 which was rejected. Since it doesn't appear possible to request a bug be "reopened", I've created a new bug to track the problem. The problem: When a Seam annotated class is included in a WAR file, the filename of the class will be "WEB-INF/classes/com/mycompany/MyClass.class". Theoretically, this IS the filename as the classes are packaged under WEB-INF/classes, however, the classloader does not recognize/ignore "WEB-INF/classes/" as part of the name (which is logical, since the classpath includes everything under this directory). This causes ComponentScanner to throw the following exception: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: WEB-INF.classes.com.mycompany.Myclass The previous issue was rejected with the following rationale: "This turned out to be a user error, not a websphere issues. The classpath was correct, but the user put a META-INF/components.xml in the WAR which causes the scanning error." However: Where would the components.xml go if a project is broken into WAR, JAR (for JPA), JAR (for EJB), and finally EAR (containing the mentioned components)? Based on the examples I've read for WebSphere , the recommended place for components.xml is in the WAR file. Moreover, it would stand to reason that including seam components in the WAR would be beneficial (ie POJO components as backing beans for jsf pages). I ran into this issue recently in Websphere 7.0 where I had a Seam managed POJO as a backing bean to a JSF page. The bean wouldn't load because of the NoClassDefFoundError. I patched seam to work-around this issue as I didn't see any other solution (JSF backing beans don't belong in my JPA or EJB layers).